


The Vanished Gateway for Higher Magicks

by Skellie



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Exploration, Mute Chell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 12:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3609606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skellie/pseuds/Skellie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legend has it that The Gateway for Higher Magicks housed the most brilliant minds, the grandest artifacts, and the most dangerous magical projects. But when a young ruins-diver searching for gear and glory rediscovers the College for herself, will she find what she came for or something else lurking in the darkness of the mysterious facility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Vanished Gateway for Higher Magicks

_My interest started when I heard the legend. Every scavenger, demon-slayer, and ruins-exploring adventurer has heard the tale of The Vanished Gateway for Higher Magicks a hundred times. And every time, it's different. Some say they simply blew themselves up with a rogue spell. Others that they dabbled with rifts and portals and parallel dimensions. Others think that The Most Excellent Thaumaturgical Circle of the Obsidian Steppe had something to do with it. And more still think the college never existed in the first place._

_But most agree that it's just that. A legend. The grandest tale of ruins unexplored. But some, like myself, believe that the Gateway is still here.  And, after months of painstaking research, mapping, backtracking, and reworking, I believe I've found it._

      The small, weatherworn journal  was shut with the flick of a wrist before being tucked deep into a thick, heavily-packed traveler's sack. A broad grin spread across the woman's face as she straightened her back. She stood at the door to a small building in the midst of a swaying field. There was nothing for miles but rolling hills and this building. It wasn't tall, only one floor, and made of white stone. The wood of the door was also light, finely worked, though it stood loose on its hinges.

      Chell wrapped a hand around the weather-worn metal handle and gave it a turn. There was a clank and scratch of metal on metal, and a rattling that achieved nothing but a slight displacement of the snow piled at the bottom of the door. With a furrowed brow, she put all her weight behind a more forceful shove, then another, topping it all off with a well-placed heavy boot to the lock. Yet still, it didn't budge. This was one hell of a door.

      She threw her hands in the air before dropping her bag to the ground. She fished out a small box with a faded white sigil painted atop the unremarkable wood. In it, a set of dimly-glowing lock picks and a container of similarly glowing white paste. After wrenching the glove from her hand with her teeth, she dipped a finger into the paste and spread it around the lock with precise strokes and dabs.

       She sat there, watching the paste with bated breath as it shimmered in the morning light. Soon, it faded, the mark returning to the door in a friendly green. Chell beamed, digging out the lock picks and setting to work. However, the plain door was proving to be more trouble than it seemed. Whoever had built this mechanism was brilliant, and even with the aid of the magical picks, took a good ten minutes to tease open.

       As the door to the small building swung open, Chell scrambled to put her gear away and get back to her feet, nearly slipping in the melting slush in her haste. She stepped in, and it felt cold. Of course, it was colder than outside, that much was obvious, but cold as in ominous, dangerous. She felt herself smile. She loved this sort of thing.

       Mud and snow trailed after her, marring the shockingly clean dark marble floor. Candles burned in sconces lining the walls and a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Below the chandelier was an elegant wooden desk. There was a large, heavy wooden door across the room and another on both walls, only accessible after one had gotten past reception. Something about it all seemed terribly off.

       With a scratch of her head, Chell let her bag fall to the floor before stepping back out into the brisk day. She walked along the wall, hand dragging along the stone as she turned the corner. She rapped her knuckles against the wall, and was greeted with a satisfying solid feeling and a dull pain in her knuckles. The walls were definitely there. She shrugged and started back towards the door. Making sense of this place was going to be hellacious.

       When she stepped back inside, everything was different. Gone was the dark, candle-lit reception hall, and with it, her travel bag and the majority of her gear. All there was was the properly-sized interior of the rustic, white stone shack. Daylight filtered in through the clear glass window, bits of dust and frost swirling through the air. A small table stood in one corner, its matching chair overturned onto the dirty floor. In one corner, a pile of tools and an old coat hanging from an iron hook. Nothing useful at all.

       She screamed, her anger entirely noiseless save for heavy breathing and heavier footfalls. Slumped against a wall, she slammed her fist down on the stone again and again, each strike with more force than the last. Part of her wanted to bleed. And that part was most of her.

      Chell didn’t move again until the light started to grow orange around her, long shadows cast on the wall and in her eyes. Wiping away tears, she pulled herself back to her feet and delivered one last punch to the wall. There was a crack and a loud grinding noise, the woman hopping back from the wall to cradle her hand. Pain surged from her knuckles and up her arm, wordless curses were hurled, and she was positive something was broken. And she was definitely falling.

       Down, down, down she slid, surrounded on all sides by darkness and smooth stonework. She spread her limbs, palms and the soles of her boots grinding and sliding against the greased stones. Nothing was going to stop this fall.

       _You’d think I’d be expecting stuff like this by now,_ She thought, arms and legs still out as she tried to exert some semblance of control over her speedy descent. She was unsure which way she was even facing now, or if she was even right-side up.

       The tunnel had the courtesy to spit her out back-first and only slightly upside-down. A catlike twist later, and her feet were under her just as she hit the ground, her enchanted boots mitigating most of the fall. The follow-up tuck and roll didn’t go nearly as well. Her foot caught on a jagged slab of upheaved flooring and sent the woman tumbling gracelessly across the stone.

       _Great,_ she thought as she skidded to a stop, _Just what I needed._ Chell stayed on the ground, eyes closed and chest heaving, just listening to the sounds of the room she had landed in. There was a low thrum filling the air, as well as a rythmic patter of dripping water. It was cold, easily seeping through her lightweight pants and sleeveless tunic. Somewhere off in the corner, she swore she heard a skittering and the plink of tumbling debris. Probably just a rat. Hopefully it was just a rat. And to top it off, there was something sharp digging into her ass.

       Chell mustered the loudest, most annoyed sigh her body would allow, kicking one foot against the ground as she reached beneath her. Whatever was causing the discomfort was swiftly fished out and hurled across the room.

       So, on the ground she remained. Wet and bleeding. Unsupplied.

       Alone.

       Then, there was a rock in her face. It bounced right off of her forehead, tearing open yet another wound she didn’t need. She bolted to her feet, head turned skyward to check for signs of cracks or crumbling as she dashed away. There was a hole in the ceiling high above her, and in that hole, a face. A pale face with a single glowing blue eye. He sneered.

       “You - you threw a rock at me!” the creature wailed, deeply offended. He cowered as far back from the hole's edge as he could, peeking cautiously at the tanned human trapped below in the ruined chamber.

       Chell blinked. She had thrown a rock at him? No. No she had not. She shook her head and pointed in the direction she had hurled the rather pointy stone chunk.

       “Yes! Exactly! I was. I was in that little hole!” A dark fur-covered forearm poked out of the hole, a furless finger guiding Chell’s line of sight just a little farther up the wall. “That one! Right there!” And, just as the little cyclops had said, there was indeed a chunk missing from the wall, leaving a nice ledge that something could perch upon. Right there.

       After a few looks from the hidey-hole up to the thing in the ceiling, Chell sighed and smiled up at him, an awkward “oops” of a smile accompanied by a little shrug. It’s not like it had been intentional, after all. He had to know that.

       There was an annoyed mumbling coming from the ceiling, the  cyclops finally showing more of himself. He dropped out of the hole, hanging from the light stone by both of his feet. his back was curved, head tilted in a way he could still easily regard Chell. He was lean, and definitely scrawny, his dangling arms seeming slightly too long for his body. He was furred like a satyr, coarse, dark fur covering opossum-like legs.

       An imp.

       “Soooo,” He started, rolling a hand in the air as he hung there, watching her expectantly with that large blue eye. Chell remained silent, staring right back up at the imp. She mimicked his motion with a sigh, a roll of her eyes, and a slight tilt of her head back. He continued to stare, lips slowly curling down until Chell could see teeth - a mouthful of blunt little spikes - followed by a flash of blue flesh and a loud, frustrated sigh. He curled in on himself, hands on his head, tugging on his short, messy hair. The imp rapidly uncurled, one hand clamped up on the edge of the hole while the other pointed at Chell.

       “Are you going to say anything to me? Anything at all?”

       Chell gave a slow shake of her head from side to side.

       His hand, and his expression, dropped. Then, he perked up. “Ohh! I know what this is! You’ve hurt your squishy human head in the fall, then. Brain damage. You poor thing.” He pressed his hand to his heart and closed his eye.

       And then a rock hit him in the face.

       He yelped, the shock of pain and betrayal dislodging the imp from his perch. He crashed to the ground face-first, a small spray of water dappling the shins and toes of Chell’s boots. His eye was closed, lip quivering as a faint, but fully annoying whine started to fill the room. The noise didn’t stop even when Chell nudged the toe of her boot against his head a few times. Instead, it grew louder.

       Chell furrowed her brow and shifted her foot to his shoulder. With a final push, she rolled him over onto his back. She crouched down and watched the imp open his eye.

       “Oh,” He blinked a few times “I’m fine!” He was up in an instant, Chell taking an awkward hop back to avoid a horned headbutt to the chin. A grin was splayed on the small cyclops’ face. “You know. She told me I’d die if I ever went into the chambers. But I didn’t!” He gave a quick  and triumphant little "Heh!" and patted his chest before falling silent. His hands dropped back to his sides, the cyclops looking around the room. “No, I don’t like it, though.” He shook his head and scurried back towards the wall, eyeing a large pit that either of them could have easily fallen into earlier. “Nope. Not one bit.”

       It didn’t stop Chell. She walked right up to the edge and stared down into the pit. It was dark, impossibly so, but a gently-tossed piece of rubble showed the bottom to be filled with quite the amount of something liquid. The splash hissed and ate into unprotected stones. Across the long chamber, nearly hidden by mist and darkness, there was a single door. It was high up on the wall, its top nearly brushing the ceiling. She could make out four squares framing the door, stacked up along the left side. One of them was lit bright blue. She followed a line of runes to a recess about halfway up the wall to her left. In the recess, she could see a crystal cube. In it, a glow as blue as the rune line leading away from it. The glow of the other three cubes made them easy to find as well. One was even on this side, though it was up high on a ledge There was an identical ledge on the opposite wall. She smirked. This wasn’t going to be a problem.

       “You might as well throw yourself off,” The imp started as he curled up on the floor. “Everything’s broken. We’re stuck in here. Maybe she was right. I’m gonna die in here!”

       Ignoring him, Chell backed her way to the right wall, kicking debris off the ledge as she went. Once satisfied that it was clear enough for her needs, she rubbed her hands together and started to run. A powerful jump and she cleared the imp and was partway up the right ledge wall.

       “H-hey! What are you even-”

      Then, a kick and a twist, and she was higher still on the wall opposite the exit. She pushed off from that wall as well and stretched out her arm. Her fingers clamped down on the tip of the left ledge and her other hand was soon to follow. Now dangling, she braced her feet against the wall. Pulling herself up proved to be no problem at all. She probably could have done it without her sure-grip gloves.

      “H-how the bloody…?” The imp scratched his head, staring up at Chell from his seat pressed up against the left ledge wall. She then jumped down, the deep green-glowing crystal cube held tight in her hands. “Maybe we’ll get ourselves outta here after all.”

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say? I like AUs. The rating might change depending on where this ends up going. Sorry the summary sucks. Is anyone actually good at writing these things? Aah I am so nervous about posting this I hope it's okay!
> 
> Also, it turns out I -really- like writing Wheatley.
> 
> I'll post some sketches of Adventure Chell and Imp Wheatley on my art tumblr later, too :o


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